American politics

Voter ID laws

Holder dons the gloves

THIS week in the paper I'm writing about the likely battles over voter-ID laws. The Justice Department, as you may have heard, decided to block South Carolina's law requiring citizens to show government-issued photo-ID in order to vote. My article will take a bird's-eye view, but on this issue it's also worth taking a street-level view.

First, and perhaps most important, there is nothing inherently illegal or unconstitutional about making citizens show government-issued photo-ID in order to vote. We know this to be the case because two states, Georgia and Indiana, have already enacted such laws, and because the Supreme Court upheld the latter's statute, however tepidly, in 2009. But neither do states have an unfettered right to pass whatever restrictions they wish (although that is precisely what Antonin Scalia argued should be the case, absent "proof of discriminatory intent", in an entertaining but grumpy concurrence. That this would effectively gut the Voting Rights Act seems to trouble Justice Scalia not a whit). And in South Carolina's case, the Justice Department found, based on evidence presented by the state, that the law would unfairly burden minority voters. Or, more precisely (and please forgive the tortured syntax; there is a good reason for it), South Carolina has failed to prove that the law would not unfairly burden minority voters. Under the terms of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the burden of proof falls on states or districts that showed a pattern of discriminating against voters in the past. South Carolina failed that burden.

Here's where it gets interesting. South Carolina's law orders the state's election commission to provide free voter-registration cards, to "undertake a number of training, public education, and outreach activities regarding the new photo identification requirements and other provisions of the Act", and to contact registered voters without proper ID to inform them of the change. But the state apparently provided no final plans for how it might do all these things; a heavy logistical burden, especially given that voting in South Carolina begins in two weeks. Its law provides an exemption from the ID requirement for voters who "suffer from a reasonable impediment that prevents the elector from obtaining a photograph identification." You might ask what constitutes a "reasonable impediment". The Justice Department seems to have asked this too, and received from South Carolina a resounding silence. It concludes that the vagueness of this statement leaves it open to capricious enforcement.

That is worrisome. As Ta-Nehisi Coates points out, black voters were not physically barred from voting booths; they were disenfranchised through laws designed to be capriciously enforced. Here, for instance, is a literacy test given to Mississippi voters in the 1950s. Now, does this mean that in 2012 we would see drawling, cigar-chewing plantation overseers weeding out every black voter in South Carolina? Of course not. But does the law leave open the prospect that election overseers could decide for themselves, based on what a voter looks like, whether that voter's reason for lacking a photo-ID was "reasonable"? That is precisely what the law does. And to what end? Voter fraud is abhorrent, illegal, wrong, deserving of the sternest possible punishment, but rare. The sort of fraud these laws would prevent is virtually non-existent. Some might contend that a single instance of fraud undermines integrity in the entire electoral process. If that is true, then why would a single instance of discrimination by an elected official not undermine the integrity of the constitution?

Opponents of voter-ID laws can overstate their case, and are often too quick to accuse their opponents of bigotry. But the unwillingness of supporters of these laws to grapple with their effects is equally troubling. Either they will disenfranchise precisely those voters that were statutorily disenfranchised for centuries, or they will cost states enormous amounts of money (ie, from providing free voter-ID cards, from making them easily obtainable, from education/outreach to explain changes to the law, etc). Now, it could be that supporters believe that the marginal protection against certain forms of extremely rare voter fraud is worth the burden on state budgets and the risk of turning away eligible voters. But that is not an argument we have yet heard.

If you choose to establish your college dorm/apartment as your permanent residence, that's on you. By doing so you're already spending hours of extra hassle to file your change of address with the post office, DMV, bank, etc. Furthermore, you would not need a new ID every time you move, just before each election (i.e. once every two years).

We are enacting policies to exclude fraudulent voters. That is the point.

The ID requirement is reasonable for that goal. If an indirect side-effect is that a handful of people who fail to acquire a free or low-cost ID end up not voting, no big deal. A citizen not responsible enough to do the first isn’t responsible enough to do the second.

The motivation behind the voter-ID laws is certainly suspect. It's a measure against a non-existing threat. As we all know, Democrats don't inflate their results by voting multiple times. When they choose to cheat, they just stuff the ballot box. It's a lot more efficient.

No matter how frequently you move, you would need to pay for at most 2 ID's every 6 years. That hardly seems unreasonable. Furthermore, a student could potentially avoid that cost by keeping his parents' address as his permanent address, and casting an absentee ballot.

Wait, hey now, I thought you were using fraudulent voters to justify ENACTING voter-ID policies, to which I responded that there really are no fraudulent voters. But now you're telling me that the absence of fraudulent voters (in jurisdictions that in fact do not have voter-ID laws) is because they actually DO have voter-ID laws? That sounds a little circular to me.

A five-year probe concluded in 2006 by the US Department of Justice identified just 53 convictions for voter fraud nationwide. (source: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/pin/docs/arpt-2006.pdf). Such a low number would suggest that voter fraud is a minuscule and statistically irrelevant occurrence.

Their report found that 113 individuals had been convicted of voting illegally in that election alone - more than twice the number the DOJ found over a five year period. At the time of the report, nearly 200 additional cases were still pending trial. However the majority of them were not prosecuted as the statute of limitations on election crimes is three years in MN, and expired in November 2011. Their research also identified upwards of 2800 ineligible felons believed to have unlawfully voted in Minnesota's 2008 general election.

Keep in mind that seats were heavily contested across Minnesota, as they were with many states in 2008. The final ballot differential between Al Franken and Norm Coleman for the US Senate seat came down to 312 votes after exhaustive recounts.

It is my contention that many states lack the resources (and perhaps interest) to extensively examine voter fraud. The myriad laws and methods pertaining to voter registration and voting across the US leaves numerous potential paths to fraudulent activity.

I understand the perception that more strict voting requirements could lead to disenfranchisement or suppression of votes by particular social groups... but I believe that such a perception obfuscates real issues and challenges by shrouding all arguments in a partisan light. Whether an American considers themselves a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or whatever, can we not agree that political participation is a foundational element in our democratic society which must be preserved and protected?

Surely there must be a middle ground - where voters are allowed near-unfettered access to voting, while the electoral systems and thus their results are reasonably protected, thereby maintaining faith in such systems and promoting continued enfranchisement?

A professer at Cornell, Lorraine Minnite, did a study, and published it as a book "The Myth of Voter Fraud". There is simply no evidence of organized voter fraud such as might justify any of these laws.

There are over 100m actual voters in a Presidential election. Yes, some districts may be won by very narrow margins. But you have to consider the total number of incidents - even if you multiplied it by 100 fold (i.e., (113 + 200) X 100 = 31,300) - and then estimate the probability of (a) those votes occurring in the tightly contested district in question (i.e., divide by 435); and (b) all of the fraudulent votes being cast for one candidate in that district. Even multiplying it 100 times, it amounts to perhaps 70 votes per congressional district - and even then they would all have to vote the same way.

If you have ever tried to get three people to keep a secret, you can begin to imagine how difficult it is to get 70 people to keep a secret and consprie together to alter the result - and you have to do it in ever district that might possibly be close.

As for individuals who stuff ballot boxes, well, that isn't going to be affected by a voter ID law. It isn't enough to say well, there are a few real crooks out there. You need to show that the laws you propose are rationally related to solving the particular problem.

Against the relatively small number of apparently random incidents, you need to weigh imperical evidence that where voter photo ID laws are enacted it appears to suppress voter turn-out by, typically, 2 - 3 % of eligible voters. There are almost 200m eligible voters. 2% of 200m is 4m voters.

So for fear of 70 bad votes, you disenfranchise 10,000?
It's like a doctor who treats a paper cut by amputating the hand.

The cure is does far more to undermine the integrity of the system as being an accurate reflection of the will of te people than the problem it supposedly addresses.

I mean, do these voter-ID laws ripple backwards in time to retroactively prevent voting fraud before they are even enacted? Because I imagine there are a great number of physicists who'd like to study that law.

Troy, NY - December 20, 2011 - the City Clerk, a City Councilman, and two party officials were charged with absentee voter fraud stemming from a 2009 primary.

"City Council President Clement Campana was indicted on five felonies and one misdemeanor Tuesday for his allegedly defrauding voters during the 2009 Working Families Party primary. Also in court, three others pleaded guilty to felonies for their role in the scandal, including Councilman John Brown, who will likely spend six months in jail."

In essence the those involved submitted forged absentee ballots of real voters, in support of a preferred candidate, without the voter's knowledge. A trial date has been set of January 17, 2012.

In cases like this, a conspiracy of hundreds or thousands is not necessary to commit large scale voter fraud. Yes they were caught, but in their defense, those who plead guilty in this case said that all the parties had been doing it, and they only got caught because they went 'too far' with it. The sentences also won't be years in a federal, but for several six months in a minimum security state prison - thus questioning the issue you raise regarding deterrence.

Whether we're discussing Republicans or Democrats is essentially immaterial - the issue is voting fraud, which affects all citizens.

Here's a challenge for journalists. Compare the name and address on voter registrations with IDs for politicians who support voter ID requirements. I bet you'd get a least a few who's info doesn't match. It doesn't for me. And that's not even getting into the photos.

It is important for a functioning democracy that the people trusts the integrity of the election process.

When enough people believe rightly or wrongly that significant fraud occurred, it undermines the confidence of the people. When the people ceased trusting the integrity of the system, the system breaks down.

Thus, the math is rather like counterfeit money. Very few counterfeiters are caught yearly. (From a TV documentary) A few small scale print-my-own using my inkjet, but very few large scale counterfeiters. The news seems to confirm that. We don't hear about multi-million dollar counterfeiter often if at all. The dollar cost in chasing the very few likely exceeded the dollar value of the total counterfeit money in circulation. Once when no one trusts the printed dollar, the economy is heading for disaster.

So, in my view, we do need to solve the problem with the IDs and push it forward. No rightful voter should be denied but every voting American must be confident that the system’s integrity is without doubt.

Well, it's neither one or the other. Congressional districts are so thoroughly gerrymandered that trickery doesn't really help. Black voters are often packed into "minority-majority" districts. The GOP would need to disenfranchise 100% of the black electorate in Clyburn's SC district to have a chance. Likewise, any district with a large illegal population is automatically Democratic territory. There's no need to cheat.

A professor at Cornell, Lorraine Minnite, did a study, and published it as a book "The Myth of Voter Fraud". There is simply no evidence of organized voter fraud such as might justify any of these laws.

There are over 100m actual voters in a Presidential election. Yes, some districts may be won by very narrow margins. But you have to consider the total number of incidents - even if you multiplied it by 100 fold (i.e., (113 + 200) X 100 = 31,300) - and then estimate the probability of (a) those votes occurring in the titghtly contested district in question (i.e., divide by 435); and (b) all of the fraudulent votes being cast for one candidate in that district. Even multiplying it 100 times, it amounts to perhaps 70 votes per congressional district - and even then they would all have to vote the same way.

If you have ever tried to get three people to keep a secret, you can begin to imagine how difficult it is to get 70 people to keep a secret and consprie together to alter the result - and you have to do it in ever district that might possibly be close.

Against that you need to weigh imperical evidence that where voter photo ID laws are enacted it appears to suppress voter turn-out by, typically, 2 - 3 % of eligible voters. There are almost 200m eligible voters. 2% of 200m is 4m voters.

As a californian it can be my civic duty to vote in elections up to several times a year, including state, local, ballot initiatives, primaries. Suppose I am hard up for cash. I either ignore my civic duty or I vote from a place where I am not resident in elections which do not effect me if we go with your choices.

The provision requiring up to date addresses is not a reasonable method of controlling fraud. It is there to keep people from legitimately voting. this could be done much easier if to verify one's address one only had to present a bill or bank statement.